An American jailed in North Korea has been allowed to call home for the first time since being sentenced to eight years’ hard labor, as the US urged his release.
Thaleia Schlesinger, a spokeswoman for Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ family in his hometown of Boston, said Gomes spoke with his mother on Friday.
“Yes, she did receive a phone call from her son in North Korea. She was really quite surprised and relieved,” Schlesinger said.
“She is grateful to the government for allowing him to call. She has no other comment but to say she was thankful to hear his voice,” she said.
The 30-year-old from Boston was jailed by North Korea on April 6 and fined 70 million won (US$700,000) for illegal border crossing.
Gomes’ mother did no reveal more about the conversation, Schlesinger said, “but she did say she is praying for him and for his safe return.”
Pyongyang said it had allowed Gomes to make the call.
“US citizen Aijalon Mahli Gomes … asked for a phone contact with his family for his health and other reasons,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
“The relevant organ of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, taking his request into consideration, permitted him to do so on Friday,” it said.
The US welcomed the “gesture” by North Korea to allow Gomes to phone his family, but urged Pyongyang to free him from jail.
“It’s a gesture,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters. “But we want to see him released on humanitarian grounds.”
Gomes, a former English teacher in South Korea and reportedly a devout Christian, was arrested in January — the fourth US citizen in less than a year to be detained for illegal entry.
KCNA said he had “admitted all the facts” at his trial.
The US has requested an amnesty for him, working through the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which represents US interests in the country.
The hardline communist North pardoned and deported three previous offenders. Analysts have said Gomes may also be freed after Pyongyang uses him as a bargaining chip in its nuclear standoff with Washington. The US and other members of a six-nation nuclear disarmament forum are pressing the North to return to talks which it quit a year ago.
Pyongyang wants Washington’s commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty before it returns to the six-party talks.
It says it developed its nuclear arsenal in response to US threats and needs a peace pact before it can consider giving up the weapons.
The US says other matters should wait until after the North rejoins the talks and shows it is serious about denuclearization.
Gomes crossed the border from China on Jan. 25, reports from Pyongyang said.
A Seoul activist, Jo Sung-rae, said in March that the American had taken part in anti-Pyongyang rallies in South Korea and was moved to tears by accounts of rights abuses in the North.
Gomes crossed one month after US missionary Robert Park walked into the country across a frozen border river from China on Christmas Day, calling on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to quit because of rights abuses.
North Korea freed Park in February without putting him on trial. Its official news agency quoted him as saying he had been misled by false Western propaganda.
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